Crumbling
by shipperfey
Summary: Everything crumbles with time. HouseCameron, with CameronChase.


**Title: Crumbling (1/1)**  
**Author:** Alice J. Foster

**Summary:** Everything crumbles with time.  
**Spoilers:** "Insensitive" (you know what I'm talking about)  
**Category:** Romance, Angst  
**Warnings:** sex, graphic sex, angst. I think that covers it.  
**Pairing(s):** House/Cameron, Chase/Cameron  
**Rating:** R

**Started:** 3/13/07  
**Finished:** 3/13/07

House stood still in the darkness of the MRI Lab anteroom, trying to both ignore and memorize the scene in front of him. He wished more than anything that he'd never followed Chase, but the young man's eagerness to stop some charting after a mysterious page had intrigued House.

He should turn away, he should walk out of the room, and pretend he didn't just see two of his fellows making out during their shift—fuck that, he should fire them both. He wasn't a lawyer but he was pretty sure that having sex in the hospital was grounds for termination of their fellowship contracts; only problem with that was that he would had to possibly deal with lawyers, and he hated lawyers.

The sound of glass shattering startled even House, and Cameron's head jerked from where it was joined with Chase's so fast she'd probably pulled a muscle. House stared at the ground where the glass that separated the anteroom from the lab lay, shattered all over the ground, after the chance encounter with his cane.

"House, we can explain—" the Australian accent was the last thing House wanted to hear, and he had to hold himself to keep is cane from having yet another chance encounter, this time with the young doctor's face.

"Out," House gritted between his teeth.

Cameron wouldn't meet his eyes, and that was all well because he didn't want to see her eyes either. She started to follow Chase out of the room but House stopped her with his cane, much less forcefully than he wished.

"House…" she started to say, her voice barely a whisper. There was no guilt in her voice, just some fear and—if he listened hard enough, some curiosity.

"It's noon. Anyone could've walked in. What the hell were you two thinking?" He tried to ignore the small expanse of stomach skin that was peeking at him from where Chase had undone the bottom few buttons of her shirt.

"No one would've walked in," Cameron started to explain. "It's late and I booked the room for a research project for an hour."

House laughed bitterly; leave it to Cameron to _plan_ spontaneous and illicit sex. Not that she planned it very well, because _he'd_ walked in, therefore anyone else could have as well. But there was no point in bringing that up, so he just shook his head. "Doubt it would've taken him more than 3 minutes," House witted after a minute.

She didn't contradict him, just started to slowly button her shirt.

"Why are you doing him?" House asked, with the first bit of sincerity in his voice in a long time.

"It's none of your business, House," she replied, still not meeting his eyes.

"You made it my business when you shoved your tongue down my throat last week."

"For the record, you used tongue first. And I only kissed you to get your blood."

House snickered, "right."

"Of course, if I'd known you were only faking brain cancer to get attention and drugs, I wouldn't have bothered."

"Are you always this bitchy when you don't get some?"

Her eyes met his for the first time in the dim light of the MRI Lab. "Fuck you, House."

"Is that what you're trying to do by sleeping with Chase? Fuck me?" House asked with a soft voice, more vulnerable in that moment than he'd been through the entire duration of their kiss.

"No, I'm trying to _get off_ by having sex with Chase," Cameron admitted as she slipped her feet into her delicate, yet comfortable shoes.

"Is it working?" House asked wittily and from the way she bit her lips, it was suddenly clear that it wasn't. "Why do you do it?"

She shrugged. "I have needs, just like everyone else."

"Haven't you ever heard of a vibrator?"

She stopped fidgeting with her clothes, and sat down on the sliding table. "It's not just about orgasms, House. It's about—" she stopped talking and just sighed, before allowing her head to drop onto her hands.

"What? What is it about?" House asked impatiently. "Human contact? Or is it the liberating feeling of manipulating people? I've noticed you're getting much better at that. At least I pay for services after I use people for sex."

_so i'll love whatever you become  
and forget the reckless things we've done  
i think our lives have just begun  
i think our lives have just begun_

Cameron's body went rigid at his words, and he stood still as she got up and slowly moved towards him, until their feet were almost touching. There were unshed angry tears in her eyes, and a small part of him hated himself for confronting her at all.

"You should be proud," Cameron gritted at him. "You're always striving to make people more like you, always telling people off for showing their feelings, or not speaking their mind, or letting themselves be fooled. Well, guess what? I'm not that person anymore, House. Being around you for all these years, pining for you, working for you, has turned me into someone I don't even recognize in the mirror. And the worst is, I'm not unhappy. I don't hate myself for sleeping with Chase, I don't hate myself for performing euthanasia on a patient, and I don't hate myself for lying about how much Vicodin you take to a cop, to save your sorry ass. I'm not the same woman you hired—I'm not lobby material anymore."

He bit his lip, unsure how to react to her small outburst. After swallowing dryly, he spoke: "but you're still just as damaged."

She huffed at him but didn't move away. "And so are you," she retorted, challenging him at his own game. "And we'll always be this damaged. So what do you care if I'm doing Chase and damaging him as well?"

His only reply was to smash his lips against hers. Her tongue tasted salty from her unshed tears, and his hands moved quickly to her ass, because if she pulled out a needle out of her pocket this time, at least he would know what her bottom felt like, and he could stop wondering about it every night as he laid in bed. Her body never moved away, though, and her hands were roaming his body on their own.

She felt just like he scarcely allowed himself to imagine, all hard angles with a frailty that betrayed her true strength. He swallowed her moan when his hand moved between her legs; taking it slow was obviously out the window and he quickly undid the button and zipper holding her pants to her body, pushing the fabric down her thighs until they gravity did its job and they pooled at her feet.

The slick wetness of her was suddenly too much, and he broke away from her lips. "Is this for me? Or for him?"

She responded with a throaty chuckle that drove him mad, as she pushed her hips into his hands, grinding her clit against his palm as his fingers rubbed the right spots inside her.

He backed them up until her ass hit the sliding table of the MRI machine, and he did what little he could do to help her get up on the table, watching as she moved her previously missing lab coat to cover the table. "Condom?" he asked as he undid his belt.

"How do—" she started to ask, as he reached for her lab coat, and after some quick fishing he found the foil packet in the breast pocket.

"You're not stupid enough to have unprotected sex with Chase, and you're _definitely_ not stupid enough to leave condoms up to him," House answered the question she'd never gotten to finish asking, as he ripped through the foil, barely noticing the way his hands were shaking.

When he pushed into her, reality finally sunk in – he was fucking Allison Cameron... in the hospital MRI lab… after catching her making out with Chase a mere ten minutes before.

House pushed the memory of Chase pawing Cameron away from his mind as he stood still, deep inside of her, feeling her muscles slightly quivering around him even through the latex.

He must've stood still too long, because Cameron calling his name startled him. He looked at her, finally seeing her for the first time since he walked into the room. "You're wrong, you know?" He whispered as he slowly started to move inside her.

"Ab—" her voice broke down as she let out a soft moan. "About what?"

"You're still lobby material," he said against the skin of her neck. "You're still perfect—" he tried to correct himself by adding "perfectly damaged… you're still perfectly damaged."

She spasmed around him, with all the strength he'd always known she had, and for the first time in a long time, he gave himself entirely to someone else, even if just for a split second.

They dressed mostly in silence, their hour almost up. He waited for her questions to come—_do you love me? How do you feel about me? What does this all mean? _but in the end, it was his own voice asking those questions silently, and he had no answers. "Don't fuck him again," he wanted it to sound like a demand, or a warning, but it came out as a plea.

"I don't—" she started to say, but paused. "I can't—"

"You wanted my attention, you have it. Don't go back to Chase."

Her eyes met his as she zipped up her slacks, "I didn't want your attention," she corrected him, "I wanted you."

He wondered at her use of the past tense, whether it was intentional or not but he didn't want to make himself even more vulnerable by inquiring about it. "You will never be as good at manipulation as me, you know?" He asked as she was exiting the lab.

She paused and looked back at him, "How do you know?"

House smirked, "Because no matter how much you try, you will never be able to stop people from liking you."

Her shy smile before she left the room was the only acknowledgment he got from her.

_and i feel my world crumbling  
I feel my life crumbling  
i feel my soul crumbling away  
and falling away  
falling away with you_

**_the end_**


End file.
